Q&A: Making Experimentation Standard, Dummy Trusts Their Instincts with New LP ‘Free Energy’
WHERE DEFIANCE AND IDEALISM JOIN HANDS — Free Energy opens with the momentum of a 2012 alternative coming-of-age film. Like the better half of a world-ending romance, free-falling, radically accepting, fit for you to let loose and feel fully in control all at the same time. It’s the errant mist from a windy day out on the water, a sense of relief when risks pay off, and knowing that all is well.
A continued exploration beyond Mandatory Enjoyment, Free Energy takes listeners deeper into a mellifluous feel chartered by power pop. The sheen of deceptively simple melodies is there to cradle you amidst darker and more realistic lyrical content. The act of creation exists as a marker of life — moving forward in elation despite impending doom around us.
Dummy is often on the inside looking out in a more literal and physical sense. Although their second full-length album is primed for kineticism, its members found themselves spending time at a living room window or on long lone walks to consider, reconsider, and appreciate their sounds during the creation and recording process.
Luna had the pleasure of discussing opposition to oppression, returning to heavier sounds, and the never-ending argument of Britpop with members Emma, Joe and Alex.
LUNA: Were there any places like restaurants or outdoor spots that any of you spent a lot of time at while you were working on this album?
EMMA: We're an indoor band, I’d say.
JOE: Aside from Nathan, the rest of us are very homebody, boring… We play video games.
ALEX: I would say, for me personally, I like working on music first thing in the morning right when I wake up. I like to sit at our living room window and just look at it. We have a view of some trees. That's kind of as close as I get to nature.
EMMA: I guess in terms of writing lyrics, I do a lot of walking and thinking I would say. I would listen to the track, or whatever demo version we have of it, and walk around for hours and whatever comes to mind. Sometimes you get inspired by things when you're walking around, but I do find that for lyrics I'm often pacing around.
LUNA: The physical movement to get the mental going.
ALEX: LA in general has a really evocative landscape to walk around in sometimes.
EMMA: It's definitely not known as a walking city, for sure. That's why I like walking here. A lot of people don't really walk around in my neighborhood and the ones that I do see walking around are the same couple people like little old ladies. There’s just so much weird stuff to look at. I find everybody’s yards are so funny and full of weird, inspiring things.
LUNA: I forget exactly what interview I was reading, but I know you’ve said the “Sub Pop” single was like a bookend to the first era of the band. As I listened to Free Energy, it felt like going from the ’70s to the ’90s, and I was thinking of Primal Scream, The Stone Roses, and Dolly Mixture. Did you feel any connection or inspiration from those groups?
JOE: Bands that were tangentially around those bands, like the more left-field bands in the era of when bands are mixing dance music with guitar rock music. I think for us, the inspiration in terms of that era is definitely more like Bowery Electric, and I guess Portishead isn't a band that I would say inspires our band directly but I feel like it's similar with melding a lot of different genres into music that has a sense of rhythm that I feel like a lot of rock bands don't really mess with that much now.
ALEX: For me, I was really inspired by music that I was listening to at work. I’ve been working at a bakery for the last three years. It’s a large number of people to be playing music for so I gravitated towards a lot more pop music and dance stuff. I was listening to The Stone Roses and Happy Mondays and stuff like that a lot. That stuff goes over really well in that context, like a restaurant, high-energy kind of environment, so I think that had some influence. I feel like there was always the desire to bring in the more ’90s inspiration because that's obviously music that we've always loved so much. We were trying to figure out how to embody it in our music more so this time than the last record, where we were doing more of a retro thing. It was pulling more from a specific sound that we were really into.
JOE: And now I feel like the floodgates opened more with this record. Also not wanting to repeat that record’s sound or the early EPs sound. As you were saying with “Sub Pop,” the A side is the most realized version of our motoric pop thing, and then the B side is definitely more where the future, where ambience and dance music and emotionality has come more into play, opposed to earlier stuff that feels a little more pulled back with emotion. More of the motoric thing and the intersection of rock music and dance music that in the ’90s was happening more with, like you said, The Stone Roses and Happy Mondays, the Manchester stuff, but also with Seefeel and Laika and bands like that. Rock people trying to make electronic dance music, but still using rock instruments with samplers and [stuff like] that.
EMMA: Garbage is what came into my head. Basically the same sort of thing. It's incorporating dance and electronic music, but I was thinking of that, especially for vocals to do more poppy hooks and stuff for this record.
JOE: Curve is another one, because Garbage owes their whole career to curve.
LUNA: I was wondering how you feel about Britpop.
ALEX: Big fan… of Blur.
JOE: I love Blur. I’m a massive Blur fan. Someone said, I don't remember who it was, but they said some of the stuff on [Mandatory Enjoyment] reminded them of Blur and I was like wait–
LUNA: I’m not mad.
JOE: Not mad at all.
ALEX: I'm not a Blur fan. I don't know about the band ratio of Blur fans. I know Emma, you like Blur, right?
EMMA: I like Blur but I also really like Oasis. I'm almost team Oasis, if only just to argue with Joe about it.
JOE: With Blur and Oasis, Oasis is unquestionably an incredible singles band, and Blur is a great album band. Between those two bands, that's kind of it. Blur’s best song they ever wrote, I don't think is as emotionally impactful in the broad sense of the human experience in the way an Oasis song is, like “Live Forever” or “Don't Look Back in Anger.” I feel like that's the trade-off between those two things.
LUNA: I respect this. When was the last time any of you drew a picture with crayons or colored pencils?
JOE: The last time someone asked us to sign a record, I probably drew a goofy little character on the record.
ALEX: But it wasn't crayon.
JOE: It was with Sharpie.
ALEX: We had crayons at work. I was going to say, actually, I have a really funny drawing of myself in crayon that Katie did at work.
EMMA: Katie is Nathan's wife, and it’s an incredible picture. He’s like a little gingerbread man but with a very realistic human face.
LUNA: Oh my goodness. Why is that so realistic?
ALEX: I don't know. She did this unprompted.
JOE: Katie is the one who stars and co-directed “Nine Clean Nails.”
EMMA: I draw fairly often, but I mostly draw on my iPad now if I have to draw anything because it's easier to digitize it. I'm a full time graphic designer, so I draw a lot. I don't really draw for fun anymore, I only work. All I do is work. I have so much fun with Dummy art. I definitely try to go off whenever I get the chance to work on Dummy stuff, because everybody's very supportive of me, I feel like everybody likes the style and I've got a good idea of what everybody else likes. I can go off and do my thing, and most of the time everyone's like, “Cool, we like this.”
LUNA: Do y'all have a favorite salad sandwich or soup combo?
ALEX: Olive Garden? I love Olive Garden, but no, I was gonna say banh mi and a spring roll if you count that as a salad or something. There’s veggies in there.
JOE: I mean, we had sandwiches today.
ALEX: True. I had a tuna sandwich, and it was really good.
JOE: I had a broccolini sandwich. It was really good, but now it's all stuck in my teeth.
EMMA: I love a classic good grilled cheese, tomato soup combo. I don't think you can really beat that comfort food-wise, but I don't know. I like a lot of sandwiches. It's hard to pick a favorite sandwich. I really like a French style, ham or prosciutto and brie on a really good baguette, and nothing else, butter, maybe. Something very simple, maybe a little arugula if you’re getting fancy and want some greens.
LUNA: I’ve seen other people talking about the theme of optimism and how that comes through in your music. It’s how a lot of younger fans have connected to your music, so I was curious if that feels intentional, if that has to do with your worldview, or if that happens more naturally?
ALEX: I think it's definitely in direct opposition to the oppression that's all around us, right? It feels like we kind of have to, in the face of all that, be optimistic, because the other option is, what, giving up?
JOE: Or making extremely bleak music.
ALEX: It feels more like a protest to be joyful and optimistic about the world, even in the face of [all of that.]
JOE: I think the music sounds optimistic and euphoric, but the lyrical content is where the darkness and the political, social, and emotionally internal stuff comes out more. It’s that classic — poppy fun song where the lyrics are dark.
ALEX: That Velvet Underground dynamic of the really happy music and the really dark lyrics.
EMMA: I mean, we all grew up listening to all different kinds of music, but I know at least for Joe and I, we definitely skewed toward the very dark side for a long time when we were younger. Like punk and hardcore and metal, and that's basically what I listened to. Now as an adult, not to talk shade on any of that kind of music, because I still obviously like some of it, but I feel like it's almost more of a challenge to evoke [more positive] feelings, rather than just aggression and sadness.
JOE: It's an easy emotion to tap into musically.
EMMA: And [the opposite of that] is more challenging and more fun. I also like feeling like I'm having fun when we play too, not feeling angry and sad all the time.
JOE: For me, because of the world being the way it is, I've actually wrapped back around to listening to heavy music that I probably wouldn't have, three, four, or five years ago. Going back to things I liked in my mid twenties, and through being a teenager, and obviously some newer stuff too. I love the new Knocked Loose record, and that's not something I think most people would expect to be a listening habit for our band. Only me, obviously, maybe Emma. I don’t know if Emma likes Knocked Loose. There's enough dark and broody music, and a lot of that also feels hypermasculine too. Our band is more effeminate and more androgynous sonically, the way that MBV and Stereolab and those type of bands are. That's part of the reason I feel like we get compared to those bands a lot, because we have that same mixture of feminine, masculine, and androgyny all swirled into the sound of it.
LUNA: Does it feel a lot different recording the music versus playing the music live?
JOE: Yes. We view them as almost two separate things, and we try to capture, in both ways, the essence of the song. Whether it's playing it live before recording it or the opposite. Live, it's much more loud and in your face and aggressive and then on the recording, it's definitely more studio as a tool to help complement the songs. Our songs are deceptively difficult or–
ALEX: Deceptively simple.
JOE: Deceptively simple, yeah, that's the right way to say it. We practice a lot and our songs are really hard to play.
ALEX: I see it as one long process. Basically how we've been working for the last several years is writing songs, demoing these songs, and then writing them and recording it. Then we either play it live a little bit and develop it from there, or we end up recording it, and then we have to teach ourselves the song to play live.
JOE: Like reverse engineering.
ALEX: We're doing a new version of a song live, in a way, because it's totally different what we're able to achieve on stage. We really like to do everything live. It’s all synths.
JOE: We're pretty dogmatic about not using samplers or anything like that.
ALEX: We never use backing tracks. Nothing's synced, everything's live, for lack of a better term.
JOE: It's the five of us trying to pull off something live that I guess might be easier to do other ways.
ALEX: Coming at it from that perspective, we want to make it really powerful live. We really like heavy music and shaking your body. That feeling of being at a concert is obviously something we love and that tons of people love, so that’s a huge part of the live thing for us.
EMMA: Even if each song doesn't necessarily seem like the loudest song recorded, we're probably going to make it really loud live.
JOE: I feel like there are songs on Mandatory Enjoyment, like “Final Weapon,” where that song live is way more in your face and heavy, and on the recording, it’s definitely more subdued in a way. Live it’s just really, really in your face. It's interesting to reverse engineer some of the songs we're playing from this record.
LUNA: Which of the four elements would you associate more directly with this album?
ALEX: I’d say water.
JOE: Water and green, like rain forest…
ALEX: Earth?
JOE: Air and water, I guess.
EMMA: Our album is about bubbles.
LUNA: In my head, it’s either air or water, but I didn’t know how to decide.
JOE: Yeah, it's definitely both. I’ve said this before, and I think everyone thinks I'm a little silly, but our earlier stuff feels more red, orange, or yellow. More warm colors, and this record feels a little bit more like cooler colors, and I think the artwork reflects that.
LUNA: If Free Energy was the soundtrack to an existing movie, what would you pick, and why?
ALEX: The soundtrack that we talked about when we were making this album was the Doom Generation soundtrack. That was what Joojoo kept bringing up, so maybe it would work as the Doom Generation soundtrack.
Gregg Araki soundtracks are pretty influential on me. That’s where I found out about Slowdive. Seeing his movies at a young age definitely got me into stuff that I didn’t know about that I’m still into, so that’s pretty cool.
EMMA: I like that. I like Alex's answer. I will also say that it was fun while Joojoo … recorded us — he was so good at picking out whatever the vibe of whatever song was and playing some footage behind it. For example, “Nine Clean Nails,” which does have a cool music video now, but he was playing NASCAR cars crashing over it all, and it synced up so perfectly. We're all losing our minds because it was so funny and good. And then what was the other one? I think horses for “Dip In The Lake.” In slow motion. Beautiful horses blowing in the music video. I'm inspired by that, so we'll see how the music video turns out. It’s going to be beautiful slo-mo footage I think for that, whenever that comes together.
LUNA: The actual real world concept of free energy, based on my understanding, is pretty much impossible. I saw a Reddit thread of people discussing if this were possible, how much better our lives would be. I wasn't sure if the album title was directly correlated to that concept or how it might tie in.
EMMA: It’s a bunch of different things. I think that's why we liked the term free energy, because there's so many different ways to interpret it, really. I took a lot of inspiration from bubbles, the physics of bubbles, and the thermodynamics. How there’s a term called free energy and an equation about how soap forms. It's how much available energy there is for a soap film to expand without breaking. That's one way that you can look at free energy. The other is, yes, how there isn't really anything such as free energy. Everything must be exchanged in equal amounts with something else. Energy cannot be created or matter cannot be created or destroyed. It also just seemed like a very positive term, and we’re on that positivity trip.
ALEX: It’s supposed to be some sort of an oxymoron too, where it's impossible in our world. We haven't figured out cold fusion or whatever, but even that wouldn’t be free, I guess. It’s evocative in the modern world of energy crisis. Things running out: fuels running out, heat, and death imminent in our universe.
EMMA: We all don't necessarily fully understand it, either. It's an interesting concept, whether you understand it or not.
LUNA: I appreciate you all taking the time to talk with me today. Is there anything else you want to add?
JOE: Listen to Mope Grooves.
EMMA: If you're in LA, our record release show is September 7. If you're not in LA, we're doing a West Coast tour. If you're not in the U.S., we're doing a European tour pretty soon that we're excited about and then East Coast next year.
Free Energy is out on September 6 via Trouble in Mind.
